


The importance of primary research

by DynamicThesaurus



Category: Hiveswap, Homestuck
Genre: Don't say I didn't warn you, F/F, absolute mush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:41:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23698681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DynamicThesaurus/pseuds/DynamicThesaurus
Summary: Short, delightfully mushy Folsti. Hope you enjoy.Rated for implications, but there's nothing explicit.
Relationships: Folykl Darane/Marsti Houtek
Comments: 10
Kudos: 30





	The importance of primary research

Voidrot is a mystery.

Not much is written about it in the textbooks, at least not the ones you have access to. They’ll spend whole chapters on gill infections and swollen blubber sacks, on the best available artificial limbs that cost more than you make in a sweep and on proper horn growth and care. But not this.

There are online forums, urban terror stories about crawling husks and dead, soulless eyes. Most of it is stupid fearmongering. You ignore them in favour of the mediculler articles you’ve got stored in an unmarked folder on your husk, bookmarked and read so many times that you imagine a physical copy would be worn thin.

_Early symptoms of voidrot include: a sudden weakening in psionic capabilities, pain behind one or both eyes, visible darkening of the sclera, and increased lethargy. The infection may lay dormant for sweeps before progressing rapidly, explaining the number of cases only discovered after an individual’s juvenile moult. Voidrotten psionics should be culled within the first perigee of diagnosis; preferred methods include…_

You pause, breathe. Skip down a paragraph.

_Both lookstalks rot from the bulbs to the roots, the infection often spreading to the surrounding area._

You remember.

The yellowblood scratches idly at the hollow under her right socket, a strip of blackened skin coming away under her claws. It peels and clumps together like rotting fruit. She brushes it off with an uncomfortable shudder, stiffening as she realises you’ve noticed.

_Advanced cases may demonstrate loss of appetite, difficulty breathing, and colourless skin._

Folykl picks at her food, waiting until Kuprum’s not looking to nudge some of it onto the piece of cardboard he’s using as a plate. She shrugs and hunches her shoulders defensively when you lift your eyebrows at her.

_In absence of culling, voidrotten psionics will die of their own accord after a median 5.6 perigees. A reminder that aiding these trolls is highly illegal._

She says he found her when she was five sweeps old, curled quietly in an alleyway and waiting for death. She says it bluntly, blank tone disguising the way she sinks small and quiet into her clothing at the memory.

_Individuals suspected of doing so should be reported to the nearest legislarator._

Folykl breathes slowly where she’s tucked against Kuprum’s side, face pale and drawn. He sets his jaw tight as you reach to lay the cool towel over her forehead, but allows it, his fingers trailing gentle sparks along her arm. Neither of you speak. You do not like him, and he does not like you, but you put that aside as Folykl coughs and shivers.

_Voidrotten trolls are entirely blind, relying on parasitic energy to survive. Culling them is a mercy._

Lying on her back, she tells you about the way she sees the world—about the pulsing, pinprick wires of light that mark every psi-enabled creature, about the conduction through the air when it rains, about the staticky way it reflects off walls and off buildings. Her fingers span the air as she describes the way all this noise presents itself as a cloud of contrasting signals, buzzing.

She tells you about the static fizz-pop of goldbloods, the gravity well of rusts. The soothing murmurs of bronze beastspeak and the sharp, twisting daggers that are cerulean mind control—you understand, now, the way she flinched and scrabbled at her head when one walked past the alley in which you were talking.

She mentions the sickly-sweet, heavy blanket of chucklevoodoos, felt strongly even from across the room. The way all these flavours and textures converge and overlap; superposition, wavelengths colliding and interfering in the chaos of a crowded club.

Then she goes beyond the generalisations. She tells you how Kuprum sparks and crackles, how his psi roars to life when something angers him, how it doesn’t fade at a shoosh but instead rattles through her bones as he calms, soothing the ache where it touches. She tells you how she’s met a cerulean whose psi feels as cold and clear as water.

You say that she hasn’t mentioned yours. You wonder if you have any, after all, if she can sense something you’ve never thought to notice. Perhaps not. She goes quiet. Then she murmurs that you are ‘warm’, with grimy fingers knotting in her lap and blackened sockets staring off to the side, and you tuck that information away close to your pusher. Warm. Sturdy. Peaceful.

_Trolls who have come into contact with voidrotten psionics described the sensation as a chilling, aching pain, accompanied by a sharp dizziness that targets the psi center of the pan. Touching afflicted individuals is thus not recommended._

She scrambles back instantly when you stagger while kissing her, murmuring apologies with her hands shaking at her sides as if they had been burnt. No amount of reassurance helps when your voice is rough with exhaustion and you stumble dizzily against your cart. She won’t touch you for weeks after that and when she does so it’s careful, hesitant, fear pricking at her face.

You wear rubber gloves to limit the conduction, touch her only where the clothes cover her skin. It doesn’t ease her guilt, but it helps.

When you lay her down on the loungeplank at last, you’re struck by how thin she is, how textbooks and photographs could never prepare you for the feeling of loose skin under your fingers, the ragged, shaky way her lungs expand and contract. When you lay together afterwards, she gives you room, embarrassed as she cradles a busted-up power conductor to her chest, but stills when you touch your fingertips to hers.

_Addendum: Houtek, M. Touching a psionic with voidrot is perfectly safe with the correct precautions, and indeed recommended. It is likely they are unused to being held._

Fresh from the ablutions, her hands are soft.


End file.
